


Refugees

by ms_cataclysm



Series: Winterfair Gifts [6]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Time Period: First Cetagandan War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 01:28:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6136612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_cataclysm/pseuds/ms_cataclysm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xav Vorbarra's wife, Maryam and young daughters get caught up in the Cetagandan invasion. Piotr's Betan tutor, Svetlana escapes with them.</p><p>Uses characters from my previous pre-canon fic but all you need to know is that the young Vorbarras are staying with the Vorkosigans when the Cetagandans invade and that Piotr has a Betan tutor called Svetlana.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. On board the freighter Spirit of Serifosa

Sonia is crying too hard to stop. Her small body is hunched up, her arms gripping her knees, her face hidden in the skirt of her sarong. She doesn’t seem to notice Maryam’s arms around her but at least she hasn’t pushed them away yet. 

Sonia cries whenever the lights in the cabin go off. It’s not a real cabin; they’ve had to partition the cargo hold to fit all the galactic deportees in.   
So the lights are cheap motion sensors. Whenever they go to sleep, the lights switch off. Then Sonia wakes up in the dark and starts crying again.   
They are six days out from Barrayar and another eleven before they dock at Komarr station. Eleven days before Maryam can ask about Xav or get a real doctor to look at Sonia. 

Maryam knows that she should be grateful that she and the girls are on the freighter and not interned “for her own safety” back on Barrayar. It wouldn’t have taken the Cetagandans very much longer to connect Maryam N’Dour, Betan citizen and trade attaché with Princess Xav Vorbarra . But she’s too exhausted and too worried about Xav and the girls to be grateful. She wonders where Xav is and whether she will ever see him again.

Sonia’s sobs are dry and mostly hiccups now. Maryam rocks her daughter gently and the little girl falls asleep again, her face still streaked with tears and snot. She doesn’t want to move to get tissues and risk waking Sonia but Olivia goes to get them without waiting to be asked and gently cleans her baby sister’s face.   
Olivia almost worries her more than Sonia. At least she knows what Sonia is feeling. But Olivia barely talks to her; she doesn’t even seem to be in the same room most of the time. Olivia has always been quieter than the other girls around her –at least she had been quiet until she discovered horses; but she had never been like this.   
If it wasn’t for Svetlana, she wouldn’t know anything about how she and the girls got across the Cetagandan lines. And she has a pretty good idea that Svetlana has edited a lot out, although the bits that she knows about are bad enough. Svetlana has nightmares too although she sleeps quietly enough now on the other pallet. Only Olivia is locked in silence, sleeping or waking. 

Olivia has finished wiping Sonia’s face. There isn’t really room on the narrow pallet for three but Olivia snuggles into her side in a way that she hasn’t done since she was a much younger child. Carefully, Maryam swaps Sonia on to one arm so that she can put the other arm around Olivia for a moment. It seems little enough but at least it’s something she can do.


	2. At the Betan embassy

Olivia had been so happy that summer at the Vorkosigans . Maryam had begun to think that Xav might be right and they should stay on in Barrayar, at least for a few more months. She had decided to go up to Vorbarr’ Sultana for a few days and see if her old boss was serious about offering her a job at the embassy. She had left the girls with Natalya Vorkosigan, wanting to spare them the journey. She had wondered ruefully if Olivia would emerge from horse obsession long enough to even notice she was gone.  
Her old boss did indeed want her back and her only difficulty was persuading the ambassador that she could not start then and there. She was still edging towards the door when there was a flash of light that filled her peripheral vision and a loud bang that left her ears ringing. The ambassador was speaking but she couldn’t hear anything, she just saw his mouth opening and closing until he realised that they were both deaf –at least for the moment -and just pointed towards the panic room.  
They had both assumed that the embassy was under attack – but it was not until much later that they found out that it was the planet and that the Cetagandans had invaded. The explosion hadn’t been a battlefield nuke as they had first thought; one of the Cetagandan ships had made a crash landing and the engines had exploded– they certainly weren’t wasting the good stuff on Barrayar.   
The embassy staff had even joked that the Cetagandans had been unable to bear throwing out their old military supplies and had gone looking for a sufficiently backward planet to use them up on. As a theory, it made as much or as little sense as any of the other theories why the Cetagandans would want an obscure mudball on the wrong side of Komarr.   
By the time Maryam had worked out what was happening, she was trapped. The Cetagandans had cordoned off the embassy “for their own safety”. A few new refugees trickled in; no one got out. They were running short on space, food, money and tempers.   
The Cetagandans wouldn’t allow them out to buy food in the caravanserai but sold them MREs at vastly inflated prices. The MREs weren’t the good stuff either.   
Maryam was able to tell the young ghem commander, Captain Estif, that the pickled sea urchins and rice MREs might have been made in Old Japan with perfect truth in their daily exchange of courteous barbs. She thought that there might have been a glimmer of amusement behind the face paint. There seemed to be little point to the daily meetings but at least thinking up snark for Cetagandans distracted her for a few moments from her missing family. She wasn’t sure why Captain Estif kept on turning up. Surely he had better things to do than sit there and drink tea? Or maybe snarky Betans were the nearest thing to entertainment available in Vorbarr Sultana? She chided herself for not knowing. It was true that her recent posting back home had emphasised her business skills rather than her tradecraft but surely she had not entirely forgotten her training?  
Then one day, Captain Estif appeared several hours early and accompanied by an even younger ghem lieutenant. Estif projected his usual air of polite boredom but Lieutenant Kety seemed almost excited. If anything, Estif took even longer over the preliminary exchange of courteous barbs, almost as if he was baiting Kety.  
Just before Kety’s impatience seemed about to bubble over, Estif waved a decidedly unmilitary arm over to him and motioned him to speak.  
“Madame N’dour, we have detained a person without papers who claims to be a Betan citizen. Under the treaty of - ”   
The Lieutenant’s little speech was cut short by a yelp from just outside the door and a young blonde woman looking rather the worse for wear ran in. “Maryam !”  
“Svetlana!”  
“This idiot won’t believe that I’m Betan! He thinks I’m a Barrayaran spy! And he keeps looking at me as if I’m an Elpee”   
Maryam threw her arms round the blonde. “There, there darling, don’t cry.”  
Svetlana blessedly got the hint and immediately dissolved into noisy sobs, burying her face in Maryam’s shoulder.   
Captain Estif retreated gracefully but firmly, taking a reluctant Kety with him.  
But Maryam had barely noticed him go because Svetlana was whispering in her ear. “I brought the girls with me. They’re safe.”


End file.
